Too many absences. Failure to pass the state-mandated test. Too old to graduate on time.

Those were some of the reasons former students from Bowie and Austin high schools said they were given when they were not allowed to enroll or were kicked out of school as part of an El Paso Independent School District cheating scheme that artificially inflated scores on state-mandated tests.

Lorenzo García, the district's former superintendent, admitted plotting with six unnamed district employees to rig the accountability system and collect thousands of dollars in bonuses. As García awaits his sentencing date in October, several students, who believe they might have fallen victim to his scheme, shared their stories with the El Paso Times.

"I'm in shock still, and I still can't believe they would do this," Lilia Santiesteban said. "There are a lot of students out here that do want to study and do want to move up in life, and because of people like this, just because they're looking out for how they look with the state or whatever, they're damaging other people. It's not right."

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Santiesteban said she was turned away from Bowie High School three times in January 2008 when she tried to enroll at the campus after returning from attending Jobs Corps in Roswell, N.M.

"They said the reason they wouldn't take me back was because my TAKS scores were too low and maybe I just needed to get different help so that way I could graduate because I wasn't going to make it," said Santiesteban, now 20.

Lilia Santiesteban reflects on being a student at Bowie High School and attending Premier High School. She is one of the students affected by the EPISD cheating scandal. (Ruben R Ramirez / El Paso Times)

Campus administrators later told Santiesteban that they found out her mother lived by Austin High School, so she would have to attend that campus. But Santiesteban said she was living with her grandmother in the Chihuahuita neighborhood because she and her mother had been having problems.

"They said I would be a transfer student, and since I wasn't passing my TAKS, I couldn't get in there because I was a transfer," Santiesteban said. "I kept taking them stuff letting them know I was living here, and they said no. I told them they could send someone to check the house, all my stuff was there, but they didn't take me back."

Santiesteban was one of several students who made their way to Premier High School, a West Side charter school, after being turned away from Bowie. She and others interviewed by the El Paso Times said they went to Premier with hope that Bowie's former principal, Lionel Rubio, who'd become principal of Premier, would help them complete their education.

Rubio said during that period, more than 30 students tried to enroll at the campus. Many of the families, he said, shared stories about not being allowed to enroll by Bowie administrators.

Rubio said he does not know for sure whether the students were targets of the cheating scheme. Asked whether after hearing the students' stories, he would have kept the students from enrolling if he were at Bowie, he said "absolutely not."

Former Bowie and Premier High School principal Leonel Rubio is still reaching out to some of the 44 students that were transferred out of schools to Premier as part of the EPISD scandal. (Ruben R Ramirez / El Paso Times)

"They would have come back to Bowie," Rubio said. "I would not have let them go elsewhere. I've always believed it is the school's responsibility to provide the resources and the services needed for these kids to do well."

As part of the districtwide cheating scheme, administrators forced some students to drop out of school, kept other students from enrolling, stripped some foreign students of their credits and sent false data to state and federal education agencies, according to federal documents. Their goal was to keep struggling students from taking the 10th grade Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test, which along with graduation rates, provide a gauge of whether schools are up to par with federal standards.

Karla Castorena talks about her experiences while at Bowie High School that led to her transferring to Premier High School due to the EPISD cheating scandal. (Ruben R Ramirez / El Paso Times)

Students who never enroll, or who leave the campus to go to a charter school or get a GED, do not count against a school's graduation rate.

Sharon Nichols, co-author of "Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools," said students already face a variety of motivational challenges. She said some students are not motivated because they're poor and have to work to sustain a family, some don't care about school, and others are not challenged.

Campuses' reactions to high-stakes testing further diminish and erode that motivation.

"In these particular climates in El Paso where these events have happened, it's really bad because kids are told, 'You can't even be here because you don't do well.' What do you think that is going to do for that kid's attitude toward school? For most kids, it's going to push them out even further."

Raul Martinez, 21, said a counselor at Austin High School told him he couldn't register there because he had too many absences and he lacked enough credits to graduate with his class in 2009. Martinez said he no longer remembers the counselor's name, and he did not speak with anyone else at the campus.

Martinez does recall that the counselor did not offer to help him get caught up.

"I was asking, 'Why can't I come back?' " Martinez said. "She said I was far from the credits needed to graduate with my class, and I was. She even told me, 'There is no way in hell you will be able to graduate with your class.' She recommended me to get my GED, but I didn't want that. I wanted to walk (with other students at graduation). I wish the school had more potential to helping me out instead of just using me as another number."

Martinez was not alone.

Karla Castorena said she was 17 and a junior when she was turned away from Bowie High for excessive absences. Castorena said she was having problems at home and started missing school.

"It was my fault for bringing that kind of attention to myself, but I wasn't a bad student," Castorena said. "I was really involved in school. I liked school a lot. It was for them to have asked why the sudden change, and they took the easy way out."

Instead, Castorena said, when campus administrators found out she was pregnant, he told her that even if they hadn't kicked her out for her absences, she would have been sent away because she was pregnant.

Former Pupil Services Director Mark Mendoza said that if students are younger than 18, campuses must keep them enrolled. He said that if the student is 18 or older, campuses must show that they attempted to do all they could to get the student back in school.

"Dropping a kid, or requiring a student to drop, or encouraging a student to drop because 'you have too many absences; you're not going to get credit anyway,' that is something that should never happen and it is not based in the law," Mendoza said.

Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, said a district is not supposed to force a student to withdraw if the student has too many absences, even if that student is older than 17.

But Linda Romero Hernandez, who worked at Bowie and was later an employee of Premier when students began arriving from Bowie and other schools, said administrators at EPISD campuses made students feel as if they were guilty so they wouldn't fight back.

"They took out all the bad that they did and none of the good. They made them feel so bad that they felt that, yes, they were bad, that they weren't worth anything, that they couldn't fight," she said. "Even the parents sometimes stayed quiet, but they were angry."

Allen Valdez, 22, said that feeling of guilt has not subsided, even as he learns more about the scheme that sought to remove certain students from EPISD.

"I felt responsible because in my mind, I thought I was the problem," Valdez said. "It still kind of lurks around. I just wanted to graduate from Bowie. I just wanted to graduate with my whole 250 classmates or whatever, but the graduation at Premier with 20 of my classmates was nice. I just wanted to walk. I just wanted to walk across the stage."

Valdez said he was set to repeat his senior year at Bowie during the 2008-09 school year.

He said that on registration day, Bowie's principal, Jesus Chavez, approached him and told him that he could not enroll because he had too many absences.

Valdez said Chavez told him and his mom to return the next day to meet with him.

"He said we were going to discuss options and whether or not I would be allowed to register," Valdez said. "Me and my mom actually came to the meeting, and he didn't show up to the meeting."

Chavez did not remember Valdez but said he would never tell a student that he could not register.

"If a student makes it to their senior year, how could I ever in good conscience say, 'You can't come back for your senior year'?" Chavez said.

"That would be just a travesty on my part, and if I scheduled a conference and I wasn't there, and he never came back, I don't know what to say there."

Valdez said Chavez's no-show forced him to look elsewhere.

He, Castorena, Santiesteban and Martinez turned to Premier High School.

"I didn't have a car and would rely on my boyfriend that attended that school, and when we would fight, he wouldn't take me," said Castorena, who graduated and now wants to be a nurse. "I would have to take two buses to get to school. I remember being eight months pregnant and waking up super early to get to school. Instead of taking two buses to Premier, I could have been walking two blocks to Bowie."

The task of taking four buses to school every day was too taxing for Martinez. Without school and with no job, Martinez began to have run-ins with the law.

"It just started getting hard on me," Martinez said. "I couldn't do it anymore. Honestly, because there was no way for me to make money, I just started getting caught up in the wrong scene and I started going in and out of jail."

But Martinez said he eventually got hired at a pizzeria. He said the opportunity helped him to start getting his life back in order. And, a few weeks ago, Martinez earned his GED.

"I was going downhill, and the job gave me a second opportunity in life," Martinez said.

"That was my first job, too, and I didn't want to get in trouble anymore. I just thought, 'What am I going to do with myself?' I'm not going to keep on going in and out of jail. I wouldn't change the past because I think whatever happened in the past made me stronger and who I am today."

Martinez is now looking to the future.

"I just want to pick up a quick trade, something like heating and cooling, but I really want to go to school to help children with special needs," Martinez said. "I have a stepbrother and a cousin that have autism. To me that's like showing love. I have a big heart."

Valdez works at a meat market and is enrolled in the fire tech program at El Paso Community College. He said there were moments after he left Bowie that he thought of giving up, but his family encouraged him to keep going.

"They (EPISD administrators) don't know what we went through at the time," Valdez said. "They did all of this not knowing the effect it was going to have on us."

Santiesteban said administrators, who now talk about helping students who didn't finish school because of the scheme, cannot heal the pain she feels from knowing that she will never have a diploma from the school where her parents and grandparents met.

"I try not to think about it because I just feel really sad," she said.

"Not even my boyfriend knows about it. It's just sad.

It's just incredible how people could hurt other people with little things like that. Well, it wasn't little."

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